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twenty one pilots' fourth album Blurryface has just hit yet another amazing milestone.
It seems as though twenty one pilots are breaking new records almost every single day at this point, but the duo have just hit an incredible new milestone with 2015's Blurryface: it has now become the most-streamed album by a group of all time, surpassing a whopping 3.5 billion streams on Spotify.
The news comes via Chart Data – a company who upload music charts and news in real time. Despite the continued success that Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun are experiencing – not just with Blurryface, but also newest album Trench and the subsequent Bandito Tour – the band have worked hard to not let fame get to their heads, while also battling personal insecurities.
“When you get to a level of this magnitude, you want to make sure that you never start to believe that everything revolves around you, and to be very healthily aware that you’re just a tiny little slither of reality – not the full thing,” Tyler told Kerrang! last year. “It’s very encouraging, and it takes a lot of pressure off, as well; when you start to truly believe that you’re the most important thing in your life, then you start to deteriorate.”
He also admitted that, while millions of fans look up to them, both he and Josh still doubt themselves.
“There’s certain things that you work through, as a human,” explains Tyler. “Obviously, there’s things where it’s like, ‘Are we good enough to play music for a living? Are we good enough to write songs and show people what we’re made of?’ As things got bigger, there was some confidence instilled in us – like, ‘You know what? Actually we can do this…’ But there are also a lot of aspects of doubt and insecurity that the level of success doesn’t even affect. And, partially, I’m glad, because I don’t necessarily want that external reward to solve some sort of internal issue. I think that Josh and I will take every stage with a bit of needing to overcome something, and wanting to work through something. We never want to feel completely comfortable; we want people to see us working through something, and for us to struggle, and see a bit of turmoil and chaos.”
twenty one pilots will return to the UK this summer to headline Reading & Leeds in August.
We recently asked Tyler what fans can expect from their debut headline slot at one of the UK’s biggest festivals, and he enthused:
“The culture of music in the UK is something we’ve always looked up to. Some of our favourite performances of festivals and stuff has been over here. In a sense, when you live over in the States, you kind of look over at the UK as a very credible, cool, authentic music scene.
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“It’s tough to get everything in our live show to translate over into a festival set, but there’s something special about festivals, and something special about being outside, too. And that set is going to be like no other set we’ve ever played. There’s definitely an air of unpredictability, and you don’t really know exactly what to expect. You’d be a fool to assume that everybody is there to watch you – or even know who you are. So there’s a bit of a competitive edge to it, because there’s so many awesome bands on the bill, and so being motivated to rise above that giant pool of talent, and to make your mark, is something that we’re really excited to step up to that challenge.
“The last time we played Reading was one of my favourite sets ever. I did a stage-dive and climbed over the top of 10,000 people, and had a few people pulling on me in the process, but I rather enjoyed it! I thought it was a lot of fun, and the energy was amazing. I can’t wait to do it all over again – we’ll see what happens this time…”